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Thursday, June 6, 2013

Strawberries and poults

Strawberries are coming in now along with all of our lettuces, chard, bok choi and radishes. I'm struggling a little to come up with new ways to use so many fresh greens so I'm going to have to preserve some of them....which is a good thing but I've never tried to preserve bok choi. I think eggroll wrappers might be part of the deal.

Strawberries started turning full on red on Monday, since then we've harvested about 6-7lbs. I'm hoping they'll give me the low end of the expected yield for 80 plants...right around 40lbs or 1/2lb per plant. Right now it's hard to say if the patch will put that much out....hope so. I'm counting on a good harvest.

I'm challenged this pay period to utilize all of our resources and not the grocery store for this two weeks. At least this is well timed with a productive garden, hens laying well and a goat giving lots of milk. We have a mean turkey to cull and he'll give us at least 10lbs of good meat. I have a few musts from the store....sugar, bananas, coffee, granola bars (which I could make but I'd be lucky to find the time), butter and lard. I still have lots of animal feed to buy- 200# chick starter, 40-50# sunflower seeds (goats) and dog food (I think).

This tight budget also means that the Farmer's market that begins later this month, I'll be attending- but not as a vendor...at least not at the start. I still need to get my LLC registered, state business registration and EIN plus my space rental.....all that cost money I don't have right now. That's ok though, I don't really have my inventory as complete as I'd like and this gives me more time to concentrate on getting my inventory together. I hope I'll be a late-comer at the market, but it's not the worst thing ever if I don't. Another year to get it all together might be just what I need.

We've had a couple really good hatches lately- 7 ducklings and 6 poults (turkey)from the incubator. Mama turkey #1 hatched 2 poults and they are doing great, on all forages no less. She hasn't taken them to the barn at all so they aren't eating feed. Mama turkey #2 hatched 8 poults, so far so good but they are brand new to the world. I had her adopt the most recently hatched poult from the incubator, one that is the same age as her babies. Again, she's not taking them into the barn so they are growing on just weeds and whatever else they find.

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About Me

I'm a stay at home mom to my 3 1/2 year old son and 3 month old daughter, and a wife to my dear husband Neil. We own a 9 acre hay field + 5 acres at our house. I think new baby chicks and sprouting seeds never lose their magic.